One Issue I Have With Religion

I am curious if others feel the same way as me, but when someone tells me that I have "God given talent" or I was "blessed by God" I get a little offended. Not to the point that I would yell at someone, but that I would tell them that I actually worked my butt off to get where I am.
I don't like having my success undermined by God. What are your thoughts?

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If you have a "God given talent," or you have been "blessed by God," the obvious question should be: which god? There are thousands of them to choose from. To the extent that I have any "talent" or "blessing" for which to be thankful, I would first thank my genes, then my parents, then my hard work. God? Not so much.

when someone tells me that I have "God given talent" or I was "blessed by God" I get a little offended. I would tell them that I actually worked my butt off to get where I am.

I have been thinking and saying this since I was like only 8 or 9 years old, every time somebody would see a singer or pianist on tv and give god the credit. Even as a child I felt that "that's just unfair, they put a lot of effort in their skill, but you say that it was just magic."

It's fucking mind boggling how stupid religious people are, that they still haven't figured this out.

To me talent is different from success. Success, in virtually any serious endeavour, requires a whole lot of work whereas talent may well be present through no fault or effort. For instance, I have perfect pitch. This is an amazing talent (to some people - to me distinguishing one note from another is no different from distinguishing one colour from another), but it required no work on my part whatever - it was just there. On the other hand I could have trained 36 hours a day but I could never have run like Usain Bolt. He has talent (in addition to working hard).

I don't like "God-given" either but, when viewed as a colloquialism, it's just one of thousands of words derived from a religious history.